Character dev for Toxmia:
14. Does your character remember names or faces easier?
22. What does your character like in other people?
40. How does your character treat people in service jobs?
14: I feel like he's better with faces; if you're not really that important to him he won't bother trying to remember your name, but he'll remember when you visited that coffee shop at the same time as him a couple months ago when he sees your face again.
22. Usually he's got a pretty big distaste for others, but one thing he does like is when someone is clever. He has a high appreciation for intelligence in all its forms
40. Honestly? He's so nice. He probably tips extra. Its the only area he's decent in.
Tagged by: @twelvesavethequeen told me to do one for her too and I’m tagging @amaywtb because I don’t think I’ve seen her Tall Friend tagged
Full Name: Alaq’it Moks
Gender and Sexuality: female, currently disinterested
Pronouns: she/her
Ethnicity/Species: Xaela Au Ra
Birthplace and Birthdate: central area of Othard, 23rd Sun of the 5th Umbral Moon
Guilty Pleasures: she feels a bit guilty for the fact that fighting comes relatively naturally to her. (on the less serious end, she likes watching miqo’te ears wiggle, they fascinate her since her own horns are stationary.)
Phobias: while not quite phobia-level, her difficult trip from Othard left her with a strong dislike of boat travel.
What They Would Be Famous For: right now, the number of ways she can rearrange Eorzean idioms and proper nouns; in the future, who knows! (she’d like it to be cooking. it probably won’t be cooking.)
What Have They / Would They Gotten Arrested For: she hasn’t had time to build much of a law-breaking resume in Eorzea yet but she probably swiped some food in her first few weeks in Limsa.
OC You Ship Them With: none romantically but I have a handful of friends’ characters who I'd like to see how she gets along with (besides people she’s already met, I still want her to meet A’zaela Linh and Jude Paw at some point after I resub lol).
OC Most Likely To Murder Them: no one so far Argath the Wolf Pup
Favorite Book Genre: she doesn’t read much in Eorzean yet but she’s fascinated with maps .
Least Favorite Book Cliche: since she doesn’t have much magic ability herself, anything where magic seems to save the day is strange to her.
Talents and/or Powers: she’s a fast and solid knife fighter and under Grey Riot’s instruction she’s learned how to use shadows and surprise to her advantage, though she hasn’t had an opportunity to use this practically yet.
Why Someone Might Love Them: she’s good-naturedly curious, eager to learn and unafraid of making mistakes. also, even if it isn’t Bismark-quality, she is a passable cook and enjoys cooking for people.
Why Someone Might Hate Them: her lack of in-depth knowledge about Eorzea can make her a little heavy-handed at times; while she doesn’t mean to be rude, she can be a little clumsily blunt and isn’t usually embarrassed about it.
How They Change: she benefits a lot from interactions with people who are willing to take the time to answer her questions and explain things, though tbh she hasn’t had a whole lot of change yet
Why You Love Them: Jab’s comment about how his character’s lack of knowledge helped him get used to MMO RP was pretty spot-on for me; Alaq’it was a clean slate who let me focus on how I was interacting with people, and I can usually fold mistakes (which I make a lot of) into her IC dialogue (as opposed to Aoife who is supposed to have a solid amount of lore knowledge - while I like writing stuff for her, RPing her in real-time is hard for me)
Do they have any particular fetishes or kinks? Valorn has a thing for blindfolds and hand-binding. He also enjoys sounding.
What’s the strangest thing they've ever done in bed? Strange is a relative term, considering his arms. He has had Cyrus sound him with her tongue, I guess that could count.
Is there anything in particular that they won’t do? Anything dealing with bodily waste or dismemberment. A little bloodletting is fine though, that happens when your lover is a vampire.
What are they attracted to in a partner? Valorn prefers taller partners and likes that they be at least somewhat athletic. He also likes partners who have something out of the ordinary with them.
What is their sexual orientation? Valorn is pansexual
Do they ever question it? Actually he questions why other orientations even exist. In his words: "It shouldn't matter what they are physically and/or mentally, so long as there is a loving connection between the two of you."
When did they lose their virginity? Who to? Where? What was it like? Valorn lost his virginity to Cyrus, shortly after arriving at the Ryder Manor. She fucked him both physically and mentally, and ended up giving him a sex drive to match her own.
What is their favorite sexual fantasy? Basically for all of his friends to drop their walls (and pants) and just have a huge orgy. Sex isn't just beautiful and fun, but it is also a great social activity if people would just push their boundaries a little.
Who is their closest friend, and why? Valorn's closest friend growing up was a Shark-Wolf hybrid named Ruston. However, he sacrificed himself to seal HUMAW's portal for leaving their homeworld. Later he made friends with a Dragon Mage named Ember, who also sacrificed himself, this time to save Valorn and his company from several undead beasts. He later rose as a Lich, with a resentment toward Valorn.
Valorn's current closest friend is Taz, the unluckiest siamese cat. He was the first person Valorn met after leaving his homeworld, and took him in. Taz as been traveling with Valorn ever since.
What do they like to do with this person? Valorn and Taz spend time playing games and sparing most of the time.
Do they have any rivals? Who and why? The closest thing to a rival Valorn ever had was his dark-half, Ebon. While they were sharing the same body, they were always fighting for control. Then once Ebon got his own body, he did whatever he could to antagonize Valorn, so long as it wouldn't get him killed.
Have they ever been betrayed? By who, and how did it affect them? Valorn met Amethyst when she was sent by HUMAW to infiltrate the rebellion. She passed herself off as a masseuse and spent a lot of time getting close to him, in an attempt to assassinate him. He eventually found this out when HUMAW attacked his base as she was making her move. He escaped, and then met her again years later, where she apologized and they became friends, though Valorn refused to let her get close to him again.
Do they, or have they in the past, had a mentor? Valorn trained directly under a General named Dayrian.
What was their relationship with this person, and how has it changed since then? Dayian and Valorn didn't really have much of a relationship outside of training. Later on though, it was Dayrian who was assigned to "interrogate" Valorn, beating him nearly to death. The two were then the heads of opposite armies during Valorn's rebellion. Years later the met again, and Valorn beat him and spared his life. He now travels with Valorn because he owes him a life-debt, though he still resents him.
What sort of education have they had? Do they want more? Valorn was only given the equivalent education to a GED, as that was all he needed to be a soldier. He also always happy to learn, but he seeks out knowledge at his own pace.
Who was their idol growing up? Who was the first person they fantasized about? Dayrian was Valorn's idol growing up. He always imagined himself working directly below Dayrian until his passing, after which he would become HUMAW's general.
Where (and when) did they grow up? I mentioned before that Valorn grew up in a paramilitary science laboratory. They called themselves "Humanoids United for the Manufacturing of Advanced Weaponry" or HUMAW for short. As for time, it was in the mid 2100-ish period. The world had just gotten out of a World War, and tensions were still high.
How did they view it as a child, and did that change as they matured? Valorn enjoyed HUMAW as a child, living a Spartan-esque life, being trained to be the greatest soldier from a young age. However, as he grew up he realised that HUMAW had an agenda for world domination that would have him fighting those he grew up and trained with, because either he or they would be sold to world powers in efforts to instigate another World War.
How do they feel about the place now? Around his mid-teens, Valorn rebelled against HUMAW and was taken for "interrogation" where he was nearly beaten to death. The only thing that saved him was the awakening of Ebon, who took control of him and broke him out. Once outside the lab, Valorn tracked down other escaped experiments and formed a rebellion against them.
Since then, both his rebellion and HUMAW have been all but wiped out. The only remaining HUMAW labs are expeditionary bases set up on other worlds, including his new home of Magica. They've sworn to have turned over a new leaf, but Valorn doesn't trust them and keeps a close eye on their actions, ready to end them if they do anything he doesn't approve of.
Describe their best and worst memories from childhood.
Worst - The loss of his arms: He was used as a test subject for an experimental fast healing injection. They put filters on his shoulders to prevent it from flowing throughout his body before injecting him. Immediately after the injection, he began screaming in pain. The formula was causing his body to generate tissue at an accelerated rate, even though there was no tissue to replace.
The buildup of tissues was stretching his skin and compressing his nerves and blood vessels. To keep it from killing him, they had to use a poison they'd developed to prevent natural regeneration. With the filters still in place, only his arms lost the ability to heal naturally and they began the slow process of rotting away.
After a few months, Valorn lost complete use of his arms and sick of looking at (and smelling) them, he found a way to tear them off. Then, with only the shoulder mounted filters keeping from bleeding out, he made his way to the lab they had done this to him. Which leads to...
Best - New, better arms: Since the regeneration incident, the lab had been working on replacement arms for him knowing he would need them eventually. They gave him a choice between standard cybernetics and new, experimental bio-engineered pseudopods. Seeing as he was in this because of an experiment to begin with, he opted for the experimental arms.
In surgery they removed the remnants of his old arms, down to the should cuffs. Here they inserted what looked like small crimson squids, which they then grafted his neuromuscular system to. Over several more months, the cephalopods grew in his arm sockets with their tentacles extending from where Valorn's arms would've been. It took time for him to learn to use them, and even longer to learn to fight with them. But he was happy to go through with it, not just because he loved to train (especially with things he never had before), but also because he'd learned that they were polymorphic.
Each tentacle was able to change into various useful forms, such as eyes, sharp-edges, multiple small needles, etc. However, they could not form more complex shapes in unison, in fact it took him several weeks alone to learn how make them into a normal-ish looking arm. Still he enjoyed the challenge and the chance to create a new martial art based around his new arms.
